Saturday, November 26, 2011

HAPPY 23RD ANNIVERSARY TO MY WONDERFUL PARENTS! Yes, Jeff and Allison have been married for 23 years. It's crazy to think about, at least I think it is. This is the first year my parents, well my mom, has been with my dad longer than she's been without him. Also, a shout out to the beautiful offspring they created! HAHA! Just kidding.

Friday, November 25, 2011

In light of the season among the many things I am thankful for one is friends, and especially friends that enlighten me to a world outside of my own little American bubble. I started talking to my friend Haruna again today. We met my junior year of high school and have been friends ever since. We were very good friends then and have occasionally sent letters and packages to each other. She sends me the best packages from Japan. Or maybe I just think everything from Japan is cooler. Well, let's go back into the archive. Yes, you get to see me in all my high school glory...

One of the reasons I brought this up is because talking to her got me excited to get back into one of my passions which is sending letters and packages. I have a few people all over the country that I try to regularly keep in contact with through handwritten letters. I think that snail mail is much more personal (and fun) than keeping in contact through text or the internet. Maybe that's just me, but who doesn't love going to the mailbox and seeing something for them that's not junk mail! I also told her I would help her with her English because she needs help with it. I miss her so much and I still think about her whenever I make origami cranes. I'm awful at origami and the poor girl had to try to put up with me trying to do it. Despite it all my junior year of high school was one of my best years ever and she had a lot to do with it! :)

If you would like to be my pen pal please let me know! I love having new people to write to!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Sorry I have been awful at posting blogs lately, but my life has been pretty boring for the most part, especially at the school. I still love it, but not much worth blogging has happened.

So, yesterday one of my students was walking around with the most old school calculator ever! It looked like the picture here but it had the fake wood on it. It was hilarious. He was pretending it was a cell phone, but it was even huge for a cell phone. I don't even know where he found it, but my MT and I were so amazed and interested in it!

So, you know Diante? The one who kept asking me to homecoming? Well, a lot of the students had their schedules changed and he was one of them. He is now in the same class as his girlfriend, we'll call her Amanda. So, on Monday Amanda comes up to me and says, "Miss Albert! Look what my boyfriend got me!" He bought her a bracelet and necklace. I said, "I like to see that he isn't a cheap boyfriend. Where did he buy it" She said Forever 21 and I told her I loved that store and she should tell him to buy me something there.
Then yesterday he was working on his project and calls me over. He asked me if I thought he was a good boyfriend because he was trying to be. I told him I thought he was, but if he hurt her in any way I would find him. I love Amanda. She's so adorable and nice. Then he goes, "Can you do me a favor?" I told him, hesitantly, that I would. He goes, "Can you tell her I say 'Hi' with a heart and smiley face?" He's such a strange boy.

So it's really funny how observant students are about teachers. Very often they ask me if I have had my lip pierced- I have if you didn't know. Like, yesterday, Amanda and another girl in my advisory started laughing when I walked towards them. I looked at them with a questioning look. Then they say, "It's just funny that your hair blows in the wind." Pretty much I should be a model is what they were saying. Just kidding! Today one of my students says to me "You dress weird. But you always look cute." I'm taking it as a compliment.

Today my MT and I had our 'Super Student' lunch for the students who had a perfect binder and warm up for the first quarter. I posted pictures below. I sat with Diante and one of the students who always compliments my clothes and who also dresses very cute. Diante was HILARIOUS when he was eating. I can't even explain how he was. I wish I had a video or something. I really don't know how he has a girlfriend. Haha. I was telling them that I was leaving after winter break and Diante asks if I can just stay. I told him they wouldn't hire me. He goes, "Will they hire you if we sign a petition? Everyone loves you." I told him that wasn't true that there were actually quite a few students who hated me. He couldn't believe it then he goes, "I'm part of the Miss Albert fan club." I asked him if he was the president and he said he was. Haha.

Finally, guess whose mentor teacher volunteered her to chaperone 6 honor students on our team at the zoo on Friday? This girls. This internship is rough... :)

Monday, November 14, 2011

Sorry, once again for the long absence. Our internet was shut off on Wednesday, but it's up and running now. I don't have much to update except this activity we did in advisory.

We are starting our student-led advisories where the students run the activities instead of the teachers. As an example of what the students are going to have to do, like write lesson plans we participated in the following activity. We all got into a circle and we had to take out of piece of paper and write our names on the top. Then we passed the paper around and everyone had to write one nice thing about the person whose paper they had. It was actually a lot of fun and so cute. Then today we came back together and everyone had to say their favorite message and the person who wrote it had to raise their hand. Four of my students read the message I wrote to them. I felt so special. :) I wrote my full name on my paper and a lot of my students were like, "Who is Jasilyn Albert?" I was like, "I should have put miss." Also, a lot of my students wrote something about my MT's hair on his paper. It was kind of hilarious. He has long hair if you were wondering.

Here's what my advisory students said about me (in order they appear on the paper):
1. a cool person to be around
2. Understanding and loving
3. Shes a student
4. helps me with my work
5. Is very nice
6. She nice cause im her favorite student :)
7. teach and help other
8. she understanding and is real helpful
9. my favorite teacher
10. Absolutely one of my favorite teachers, & is on a more personal level with me because we talk about more than just history.
11. She is nice & and even if you did something mean to her she's still nice
12. A nice teacher and doesn't care if you've got in trouble she's still nice to you
13. Great Assistant Teacher (:

I tried to keep the writing as it appeared on the paper. We didn't get all the way around the circle, but this is what a small portion think about me.

The new trailer for The Hunger Games is out! I seriously cannot wait for this movie! If you haven't read the series you NEED to before March 2012! Just saying!

Ever since fall hit I've been searching for pumpkin spice creamer like it was my job. Naturally, Kroger would put it out AFTER Halloween. They have a ton of it now too. I had to stock up though. If I was a millionaire I probably could have bought out the entire store. Just saying! :)

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Today one of the student’s mother came in to talk about her son. This is what she told my MT, “Oh! You’re cute! I didn’t know you’d be so cute.” Hahaha

We also had the pleasure of hearing from a Holocaust survivor. His name is Werner Coppel. He spoke in our auditorium which made it less homey and welcoming. My MT and I were really disappointed in how the students behaved. Some were sleeping and some were talking. I wish they would have taken it more seriously. I thought it was amazing, but unfortunately I was distracted by disrespectful questions. While he spoke I took notes on everything for two reasons. One reason was because I was just so interested in what he had to say. The second reason was because one day I’ll be teaching and Holocaust survivors will no long be alive to speak to my students, so I want to be able to give a real life account to them. His story is below.

Fifty-seven years ago he actually went to the high school I’m at 3 nights a week to take citizenship classes. He was born in Germany in 1925. His dad fought for Germany during WWI and was taken as a POW in France. Coppel has a brother and grew up in the middle class. In 1933 he was 7 years old when the capital changed. He said it didn’t affect him much because what 7 year old is concerned about what happens in the far away capital of Berlin.

In 1935 the annual convention declared the Nuremburg laws. He described them as “the most discriminating laws.” One of the laws said that all Jewish children had to be taken out of public schools. A parochial school was developed in his town. They had to walk about 25-30 minutes to his school, past buildings, playgrounds, etc. that would have signs on the outside saying things like “Jews not welcome” “Jews and dogs keep out.” The Germans did not protest to these discriminatory signs. In 1938 he said he heard German soldiers singing about how good life will be when all the Jews were killed. Again, the Germans did not protest to the singing.

On November 9, 1938 he was 13 years old. This was Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass. His synagogue was bruned down. Then following the day men ages 16-60 were put into concentration camps.
Werner was told to apply for a Jewish center in Berlin. In March 1940, at 15, he joined the center. They were trained for one day building a center home in Palestine, now Israel. 1940 was a relatively happy year, but mostly because 2 teachers protected them from the news outside. In 1941 the training center was closed and the boys and girls were transferred to concentration camps.

Going back, in 1936 a law was passed that every Jew carrying an identity card had to put a “J” on it which stood for Jude, or Jew in German. In 1940 a law was passed that every Jew ages 6 and older had to wear a yellow star. The word Jude was put in the center in writing that looked like Hebrew, which was a discriminatory act on the side of the Germans.

At one point he was able to leave the concentration camp to visit his family. In December 1940 he saw his mother, father, and brother for the last time. He went back to the labor camp where he was a 130 lb lumberjack. On April 8, 1943 all the Jews at the concentration camp were arrested and put into protective custody.

He finally arrived at Auschwitz and after the yelling, screaming, crying the first words he heard was “Women and children to the left.” Out of the 1100 people he arrived with on the first day, 557 were gassed and burned. He was sent to leave all his clothes and was only to keep his belts and shoes. He was shaven and was given his identification number tattoo, which has disappeared from the sun, but he says he still uses it as a PIN. He and the others were chased to different barracks. Every so often he and the others would have to appear naked in front of a non-commissioned SS officer who would decide if they lived or died.
He did slave labor in a very large company which made rubber. In August 1944 200 B-24s, the largest bomber of WWII belonging to the Americans, came up from Italy and started bombing Auschwitz. Instead of bombing the killing and gas centers they bombed the factories. If the Americans would have bombed the killing centers then countless numbers would have probably been saved.

He was part of the death march which Elie Wiesel, the author of the book Night, was on. The marched/ran from Auschwitz to Gleiwitz. When he arrived at Gleiwitz he saw 6 truckloads of dead people who were too weak to work and mercy shot in the back of the neck. Later they were packed into train cars like sardines. They were packed in so much that if they died they weren’t able to fall down. When they arrived Buchenwald there was a chance for him to escape. He looked both ways to see if anyone was watching him and escaped with two others. They hid for several days and eventually got behind the Russian lines and were freed. He was free at 19.
He has been talking to schools and groups for about 35 years. He started talking in the mid-70s when a man who was some kind of German ambassador to something in Cincinnati (I didn’t quite catch who the man was) posted an article in the newspaper that said the Diary of Anne Frank was a hoax and the Holocaust never happened.
He told his students that he remembered a time when Jews weren’t hired in Cincinnati and blacks were not allowed into Coney Island. He said that Jews and blacks were kept from participating in a lot of things in the United States. The advice he gave was that we have to rise up against hate and prejudice.
At this point his phone was ringing. It was his grandson in Chicago. He answered the phone and within 5 seconds says, “Hello, I will talk to you later.” The students thought it was hilarious. It was pretty funny. Then the floor was open to student questions.

“When you finally escaped why didn’t you look for your family?”
He started looking for his family in the 60s when it was clearer where to look. There was a police report that said a transport of Jews from his town had been turned over to the Latvian SS (the Germans had plenty of help, especially from Eastern Europe). About 15 years ago he accidentally ran into a man who went to the same parochial school and whose family was on the same transport. He said that those who couldn’t walk, like Coppel’s father from his injury in WWI, were taken into the woods in trucks that had the exhaust of the truck turned into the van. His research also showed him that his mother and brother were taken from a ghetto to Auschwitz in November 1943.

“Why didn’t your family leave Germany?”
Jews weren’t allowed to leave Germany because the borders were closed in every country, except China. About 30,000 went to China and were kept in a ghetto by the Japanese, but they were saved. Those were the people who had a lot of money.

“Why wasn’t there more fighting back?”
The Germans were masters of deception and psychology. Plus, they weren’t allowed to have weapons. There really is no such thing as a write to bear arms in countries outside of the U.S.
“What kept you going?”
Training in 1940 to build a home in Palestine was the goal which kept him going.

“Why didn’t you bring any other people with you when you escaped?”
Escaping was strictly instinctive. He just ran.

“What did you do for ‘fun’?”
There was no logic when you were hungry and pushed. They were constantly busy. There was no time to have ‘fun’.

“What did it feel like to finally eat food?”
While he was hiding he knew the front was coming because it was really noisy. When he finally escaped he saw a farm with farmers listening to a British station. They approached and the farmer made them potato pancakes. (I didn’t catch the rest because I was watching the students).
His wife was also a nurse who fed them. She slowly started feeding them because many of the survivors died from eating too much of the wrong thing.

“Was there ever a time you felt like giving up?”
He was trained to be a soldier and pioneer, which meant he was trained not to give up. However, the other people were there and they all helped each other to get to the point of giving up.

“How did the Holocaust affect how you raised your family?”
He raised them not to walk away from hate or prejudice. He also raised them to treat others better than they would want to be treated.

Other points that don’t have specific questions: He was 90 lbs when he finally left. He said that even today there are still instances he has to use self control so not to blow up.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Today I was standing in the hallway outside of our door, like I always do to monitor the halls and one of my students comes up to me and goes, "Miss Albert! I made this for you." I told him thank you and that I would put it up behind my desk. Of course, he didn't really make it for me, but I still hung it behind my desk. Not sure what it is... haha.

With the start of a new week the students have new schedules and a new project! The students got new schedules for a couple of reasons, mostly to put the students who need extra help in the same classes. One thing I dislike about this is that I have to look at the class rosters to see what bell a student is in. I can't just have a student come in and ask me what their grade is because I haven't memorized bells and I have to start over. But, it's only the first day so I have time.

Today we started our project on the Cold War. I'm really excited because they are going to make comics! They are using a program called Comic Life. My MT said he was going to give me the password to download the program. I hope he remembers because I will probably spend hours making comics with my pictures and everything. Another excuse to procrastinate. :)

We have our Holocaust survivor, Werner Coppel, coming in tomorrow at 10! I am so excited to actually have someone who lived during then to come in. I never had the opportunity to meet a real life survivor, so this is great! My MT told the students that they would have to pay close attention to what he is saying because he has an accent and it might be difficult to understand. Today I told my MT how I listened to him talk on a video and his accent wasn't as thick as I thought it would. My MT said that the students are "accent impaired." My students are from an urban environment, so my MT said even him and I sound different to them and that is why sometimes they don't understand what we are saying. I never really thought about it, but I can kind of see it. I told him how one of the students asked me why the two guys (who came from similar backgrounds as my students but from Cleveland) had accents. He said that that is exactly what we are faced with.

Anyways, I'll update on Coppel tomorrow. Also, if you are voting tomorrow in Ohio vote NO on issue 2!

Friday, November 4, 2011

I think I'm getting sick. Not fun at all. It's been a while since I've been REAL sick. Okay, I lied. I was really sick Christmas of 2009, but I haven't been sick during a school week since I was in middle school. Anyways, all my students are sick, so it's only time since I caught whatever they have. Right now it feels like I have a 10 lb brick on my chest, and I keep coughing. Awesome. I also have to work tomorrow morning. I'm done sulking now!

I am finally done teaching full time. It's so nice to be done. We started the introduction to the Cold War by having four stations set up. There were 6-8 students in a group and they were placed at tables from 1-4. At each station they had a reading and a set of questions to answer. They were able to ask their group if they couldn't find an answer. The catch? They were timed and only had about 7-10 minutes. My MT said that this activity was great to keep students from talking to each other. They moved from table to table which helped their attention spans which would not have lasted that long in if they stayed in their own seats. Also they were allowed to talk, but there was such a short period of time to get the reading and questions done that they locked in right away. Great activity to get students to learn information without having them listen to the teacher.

We have a new student from Puerto Rico this quarter. He is an ELL (English language learner) student, meaning he speaks Spanish. He does know English, but his Spanish is much better. He plays on the basketball team, and I'm pretty sure he thinks I am the craziest person in the world. I try to talk to him in Spanish, but I fail miserably. Anyways, he comes up to me and goes, "Miss Albert. Did any one of the basketball team tell you about our fundraiser? We are selling cookies." I go, "No, they didn't. I don't know anything about it." He says, "You like cookies?" Of course, I do, so I got suckered into buying cookies from my adorable Spanish speaking student.

I've come to realize girls are evil. I thought it was just the type of girls from my hometown, but it's not. I've known more girls who got suspended for fighting than guys since I started. They are vicious and cruel. There is one girl, who I mentioned in an earlier post, who is nice to adults, but not to her students. She was suspended for along time a while back. Well, she just got suspended AGAIN because she helped instigate a fight. Then, today, two girls I like both got suspended because they were fighting about the girl who got suspended. Really? I wish I could instill some wisdom into their minds that HIGH SCHOOL WON'T MATTER IN FIVE YEARS! Of course, they won't believe me. I wouldn't believe me at that age either. But really, the things they fight over is just ridiculous.

On Tuesday, we are having a Holocaust survivor come in to talk to us! His name is Werner Coppel and at one point he and Elie Wiesel (author of Night) were at Auschwitz at the same time, although they didn't know each other. This is probably the only time I will ever meet a Holocaust survivor. I think I will get more out of this experience than my students. I found a clip of Werner that I posted below.

I may or may not have a bad addiction to this show. I'm already on season 4. Seriously, it's all I watch. I love Netflix and the fact that it allows me to watch this show! I hate when good books, movies, and tv shows come to an end. I feel like I have grown a connection with the characters. I'm going to cry when the show ends. Just thinking about it is making me teary eyed. Haha, just kidding, but I know I will be sad!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

I am a people pleaser, most of the time. I want people to like me. I always thought I wasn't going to be a mean teacher because I get so worried about what people think about me, especially people I have to stand in front of, like my students. I never thought I would become a "mean" teacher, but after being in urban schools I have come to realize you have to be, or actually in any school really, because you don't want your students to walk all over you. I always thought that if you were mean than that meant none of your students would like you. Not true. I am now seeing the benefits of being respected rather than liked.

Yeah, there are students who hate me. Mostly my female students. I have a few that, I believe, are counting down the days until I'm gone (if they know I'm leaving). However, I have students that actually love me. Today three of them came and talked to me after school. They are so precious. They were talking about other teachers, and I was like, "I really don't want to know what you say about me." They kept telling me they don't say anything because they really like me. I have students bring me Halloween candy. Two students I really like were arguing about which one liked me more. It makes me love my job.

The three girls that were talking to me after school were also saying what things we had in common. The one girl and I have almost similar first names. I told her that every time I hear someone say her name in the hall I think they are talking to me. I said that we were soul mates in a way. Then later something came up (I can't remember now) but both her and I had a similar position and another girl said, "You two really are soul mates." The third girl and I have birthdays in April. Mine is the 13 and her's is the 17. She actually remembered me saying something about that. She said we are Aries soul mates! Haha!

Like I always say, I'm not in this job to be liked. I want to be respected. Honestly, some of these students aren't even A or B students. I've had to tell one of the girls to stop talking. I've had to tell another multiple times to wake up. But they respect me enough as their teacher to not take it personally and still come visit me to talk. I don't take their attitudes personally either. If every 10th grader hated me I would be okay with that. As long as they respected me enough to do their work and try their hardest that's what I'm there for.

By the way, going back to the Aries thing. At the Art Academy I walked over to one of the tables and one of the male students says, "Miss Albert, isn't your birthday April 14?" I gave him this crazy look like 'How does he know my birthday?' I responded with a hesitant look, "April 13. How did you know it was around then?" He goes, "Oh! Because you told me when I said my birthday was April 12." We all started laughing and I go, "Oh! Yeah I remember. I was confused because I thought you were stalking me or something." The are funny.

Lastly, today I was walking around the room and I saw the following design written on one of my male student's planner:
Sexy --> A.K.A --> Lil Sam
I just pointed to it and smiled and he started laughing. Some of the things they write down or I see them doing is hilarious.

This is so true! Haha! I always drink my coffee in front of them and in the hallway. Oops.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

We'll get to mind blowing in a little bit. The majority of this post is going to come from my methods course instead of student teaching, but we actually learned some interesting stuff today. Well, more than usual. I forgot to mention something yesterday which was the words of advice my MT gave me. He said, "If you take away anything from this experience let it be that you should ALWAYS drink coffee on field trip days." I cannot tell you how true that is. I didn't drink any caffeine yesterday and I crashed. Plus, field trips make the day seem so much longer, so that extra caffeine is so necessary. He also told me that I need to get coffee from where ever I like to get it on the go because I don't want to be carrying a cup around all day. Good advice. Some advice I would give is DON'T wear a book bag. It KILLS your back. I was in so much pain and I barely had anything in it! Haha

Today, for intercession, the students were split up into groups and went to different stations related to college. My MT decided that instead of him taking a group he would just run one of the stations so that the teachers on our team could get a planning bell. In our station they watched a film from ESPN about two Cleveland teens. Yes, Cleveland Ohio! Represent! The video is below. It's actually pretty good and a tear jerker. I won't give it away because I want you to watch it, but one of the guys has a degenerative eye disorder which makes him legally blind. I forget what it's called, but one of my students actually has the same disorder. It was so cute because when it was mentioned on the video the student goes, "Hey! I have that!" He was so proud, and this student plays basketball. It was encouraging for me to see that in this video the one boy didn't let his disability label him just like my student.

I also saw this yesterday and it made me chuckle. Kind of true, and by kind of I mean really true.

Now onto today's methods class. Usually this class is super boring and I feel like it's a waste of my time (and money) but today the second half of class was really fun. First, our professor asked us to draw a map of the world. Yeah, my drawing was awful. I didn't even leave enough room for Asia! HAHAHA! After he put up a picture and asked us to compare our maps and why when people said there's wasn't "accurate."

This is the map he showed us. It's called a "Mercator map," and it is the map most readily depicted in the northern hemisphere.

Then he showed us this map and asked us to compare our maps. It is known as a Peter's Projection Map, and this map is actually more accurate to the earth's land than the Mercator map. Yes, it blew our minds in my social studies class. Note, Africa is almost as big, if not as big, as Asia. Mexico is actually bigger than Alaska. Look how small Greenland really is. I was so shocked.

The discussion of the two maps above eventually led us to talk about the map below. It's social studies, and social studies has a lot to do with perspective!

Our professor then showed us this video to tie it all together. It's from West Wing and is pretty good!

In talking about perspectives he gave us another assignment that he modeled with a historical fiction piece. He assigned us a character on a small piece of paper with the instructions: "Take notes based on what 'you' see and experience. Before class meets next week, make your notes into a typed 'diary' account of the events. Your account is very unlikely to be longer than 1 page. Your role - Walter Donovan (male German civilian)."

Then he showed us Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade starting at 1 hour 41 minutes. He doesn't believe in showing a whole movie so it's cool to see what you can do with a movie and not have it be similar to a lecture. While we watched that clip we took notes as if we were the character in that scene. I'm definitely using a lesson similar to this in my classes. My philosophy on history is that it's not about learning content, it's about perspectives and ideas. Which means this lesson definitely fits into my philosophy. I love being creative, whether it's in writing or art, so I cannot wait to write this diary entry!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

This week is intercession week (well, week isn't quite the word). Intercession is a week where regular classes are cancelled and the students participate in something else. Fall intercession usually centers around college or college preparation. I'm not going to go into detail about what happened, but basically it wasn't planned well enough for the 10th graders so my MT teacher had to take over and plan stuff out (which is great that he has me!). Yesterday one of the colleges backed out so we were only allowed to send 60 of our 160 students to Xavier and there were no other plans telling us what to do with those 100 students. We didn't want to punish them because it's definitely not their fault they couldn't go. My mentor teacher came up with the idea that all the teachers would come up with something to do and then the students would be able to choose where they wanted to go.

I decided I was going to show Charlie Chaplin films in the morning and then in the afternoon show those corny 50s and 60s educational films. Only 2 students showed up to my morning session. I wasn't surprised because what student would want to watch silent films when they could watch movies like Day After Tomorrow. It was really cool though because I spent the last hour talking to them and getting to know them better. One of my students told me she's the only sibling without a disability. This other student (whose sister is also one of my students) told me that his family is very involved with the government of Sudan (he's from that area and lived in Egypt). They miss school sometimes so that they can participate in rallies to get Obama to send troops to Sudan. His father met with George Bush when he was president. He also ate dinner with the vice president of Sudan. I seriously did not know any of this. It's so amazing what you can learn about students. For the afternoon session the kids were just put in my room because the other places were filled so I wasn't going to force them to watch a video they didn't want to watch. I ended up watching some rapping and dancing going on. It was pretty hilarious.

I love Charlie Chaplin's films!

Today the students were able to go to Miami or the Art Academy. Only 25 students chose to go to the art academy so my mentor teacher decided we would be in charge of that group since there were two of us and all the other teachers going to Miami had 20 in each group. It was a really cool experience and my MT and I were talking about how they would have enjoyed it much better than Miami because Miami really is a glorified high school. My students would not have fit in there. After lunch we got to go on a tour of the building which was really cool. They offer classes to the public also, which is really cool and if I'm in Cincinnati for a while I might take one, although they are kind of expensive. I'll just wait until I have a real job.

My students kept asking me if I went to the Art Academy. When I would say no and then ask why they would tell me I look like I went there. Not sure if that's a compliment from them or not, but I'll take it. Lunch was amazing. They cooked us lasagna, garlic bread, and had salad. It tasted like real food too, not some gross cafeteria food. I sat down with some of the students and they were sitting near 2 students from the art academy. When I sat down one of my students says really loudly, "Oh, now I know why you're sitting here" as she was looking at the boy sitting about 5 feet away. It was so embarrassing! Three of my students were up at the counter talking to one of the guys who worked at the cafeteria and who went to school there. Later I was talking to them and they told me they were talking about the school and then one of my students goes, "And, he's cute!" He was! I decided I need to spend more time at art schools because the guys are pretty cute! Haha.

Hi there!

I am an American expat living in Russia. When I'm not teaching English or trying to master the Russian language I am taking photos of old buildings, graffiti, or abandoned places. Want to know more? Read about it here. You can follow along with my book list here. If you still want more you can follow my bucket list here.